Business administration apprentice Review

As an administration apprentice I am expected to provide administrative support to my team such as booking travel arrangements, ordering stationary, creating documents on Microsoft word/ excel and taking minutes for meetings. The apprenticeship has allowed me to move around various placements with the dockyard, allowing me to view different aspects of the business.

I have learned a variety of new skills such as how to take meeting minutes, how to talk to large groups of people, general knowledge about the dockyard/ each individual placements and how to use Babcock systems such as FCM to book travel. I have also improved upon my Microsoft package skills.

I really enjoy the business administration apprenticeship. Some of my favourite bits of the apprenticeship are that you get to move around various placements to get a full understanding of the dockyard and what you may want to do as a career, the community project, the residential to Skern Lodge and the projects.

I think the programme is structured well, the first couple weeks allows you to ease in to the apprenticeship meeting your fellow apprentices and apprentice managers. Then every four months for the first year you move around placements. In the second year you are only based in one placement for the year allowing you to establish yourself in the role.

We receive a lot of support as apprentices, the apprentice managers and office managers are always available and willing to help with any issues we may have. There is also a lot of opportunity to get involved in various networks you may be interested in such as the young persons network.

Administrative apprentices do not attend college and all the college work is assigned and completed through an application called One File, you can send messages to your college assessor if you need help and they are fairly quick at getting back to you. A college assessor also comes in to visit every couple of months.

The qualification achieved for completing the apprenticeship is customer service level two. It can be difficult to apply this to an admirative role in some of the placements as you don't always have to deal with customers directly. In the first few months it can be difficult to adapt your work experiences to answer customer service based questions.

Yes, there are lots, there are a variety of networks that individuals can get involved in such as the young persons network or the diversity network. As an apprentice you get the opportunity to go on a residential to Skern Lodge and to do a community project. There are also lots of opportunities to get involved in career fairs and open days.

Yes

I would recommend the apprenticeship as it's a good course to get you in to a business role, it allows you to learn from the basics up also letting you move around various placements to see what you enjoy. Babcock as a company is a really good company to work for and seems to care for its staff, if you put the effort in you have a job for life.

The main bit of advice I would give would be to put yourself out there, the apprenticeship is a really good way of trying new things and creating a strong network that you will be able to use in the future. Revise the company before the interview, the more information you know about the apprenticeship/ company as a whole will impress the interviewer and make you stand out.